and ONLY by going under 12-14% for most men, and under 20% for women, would you be able to get visible abs!

2. Core work ISN’T just sit ups – Everything that attaches to your hips and spine is related to core work. Hips, thigh muscles, butt muscles, lower back muscles that support the spine… ALL need to be toned, stretched and worked through their full range of movement to illicit you having a good “core”. If i’m being brutally honest, anything that isn’t arms & legs related is core work, as all your torso is for comes into either:

Organ protection

Supporting the body to move the arms and legs

Helping you stand up right (posture)

3. If you just do sit up’s, you’ll get injured QUICK – It’s like only working out the left side of your body and never your right, balance through your muscles is needed and if you’re doing the front and not the back… your body becomes imbalanced and very injury prone, plus your posture and body shape will look awful

4. Slipped disks, hernia’s & lower back pain – ALL of these are nothing but warning signs, albeit painful and significant ones. They’re your body telling you that something in your core is working harder than something else. A particular muscle or area is under-active and not pulling it’s weight, is under too much strain. Or, it could be just a plain warning that you need to get some EDUCATED help on improving your core.

5. Toned and flat are every different – Someone can have naturally lower percentage of body fat, but it doesn’t make them fit, equally how someone can seemingly be fat, but can be very strong. So to achieve the flatness of the stomach area, it’s ALL about your nutrition, but you cannot and will never be able to diet your way to a strong core.

6. You need to work DEEP and SUPERFICIAL – different exercises target different areas of the core, some do the “show-off” muscles of 6 packs etc. Others work on making sure that you don’t pull your lower back again when you bend down to pick something up.

All the muscles are there for a reason, and by neglecting one and over-training another, this is danger 🙂 So make sure you’re evening the work out between them.

This is a very quick over-view, and might raise more questions than it answers, but that’s what I’m here for 🙂

Any clarification you might want on these things, any comments you wish to make or anything else are welcome, and if there’s any way you want pointing in the right direction with this then am happy to help!